Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance

The bestselling author of Complications' fascinating examination of how medical professionals strive for better, even in the face of adversity

The Washington Post - Perri Klass

Better makes a compelling case for medical self-awareness in the operating room, on the hospital ward and even on the battlefield. Gawande succeeds in looking at medical achievement -- and lapses -- from a new perspective. His stories evoke the profound desire that doctors feel to cure, along with our besetting anxieties about poor performance and its consequences. He makes his case that failure is "so easy, so effortless," but also that "positive deviance" -- deliberate and determined individual improvement -- is possible. His own self-consciousness, his ability to ask questions about the nuts and bolts of medical practice, and his storytelling skills make this a book about the complex grandeur of the human endeavor that is medicine.